God Bless the Goths

Compare and contrast the following two familiar scenes, as spotted on your local high street on any given Saturday afternoon. Standing outside HMV/any ‘vintage’ clothes shop with a reference to spank, spite or kink on the sign above the door/Holland and Barratt (strange but true), we have an assembly of similarly clad teenagers: white faces, lank black hair, blood red lipstick, studded belts, leather trench coats, ‘antique’ silver skull jewellery and fishnet gloves abound, as do oversized Marilyn Manson T-shirts, tight PVC trousers and overpowering wafts of patchouli oil. Meanwhile, a block away, another group of kids meet and greet at their designated spot outside Carphone Warehouse/Argos/McBurgers’r’us. This lot look like walking advertising billboards: every available surface area is emblazoned with sportswear and fake designer logos, Crazy Frog ringtones struggle to be heard above the crackle of manmade fibres and pristine, box-fresh trainers dazzle against the litter-strewn street. Are these two distinct groups worlds apart? No, they’re cut from exactly the same sociological cloth: tribal, ritualistic, desperate for peer approval (ask any psychologist, they’ll explain) – and, as a result, all looking rather silly. But were this scene to take a horrifically tragic turn for the worst – if the fast food franchise crowd were suddenly to be scattered with random bullets, for example – we know which faction of kids would be first to capture the aftermath media attention. CCTV pictures of the skinny boy in the MM T-shirt would dominate the front pages of the newspapers while ‘investigative reporters’ discover Rammstein on his iPod, doodles involving pentagons in his diary and ‘proof’ that his hamster died in suspicious circumstances (possibly sacrificial). Bang to rights! At the heart of every massacre, there’s a doolally goth.

Only in the rarefied, Guardian-reading Naomi Klein world does Satan wear Nike. Fuelled by Coca Cola and chicken nuggets, the Lord of all Hopelessness must be rubbing his hands in glee: shopping is the new religion, possessions are the new black, we worship at the altar of conspicuous consumption and the PC has become our own personal Jesus. His work on earth is done! Meanwhile, the God Squad are still playing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ backwards in search of those elusive satanic messages and blaming Marilyn Manson for everything bad. Marilyn Manson! Scrape off the make up, and what have you got? A skinny geek called Brian Warner who reinvented himself as the ‘Antichrist Superstar’, thus earning himself a house in the Hollywood Hills. He’s a self-promotion genius, a master of the marketing campaign and a whiz with the make-up brush: Mr Showbiz, through and through. But when middle America (a state of mind rather than a geographical location) needs a scapegoat, what’s the easiest route to take: face the fact that the latest group of schoolyard gun-toters are the direct result of a society that worships fame, fast food and filthy lucre or blame their actions on the latest ‘shock rock’ pantomime dame?

Alice Cooper, Eminen, Black Sabbath, Anthrax, Entombed et al are all, according to the bible-bashing saddoes, occult-obsessed, Satan-worshipping whores of the devil, a conclusion based on little more than the odd bout of on-stage chicken abuse, a predilection for wearing dusty black clothes, a distinct lack of anything close to charisma and a set-list of really bad songs. If the devil has all the best tunes, he’s pretty lax, these days, when it comes to copyright (although the hard work he put into creating Pop Idol has been duly noted). The old hellraiser’s not that hot on style, either; a couple of tips from Trinny and Susannah regarding what not to wear if you’re hell bent on world domination wouldn’t be a bad idea (all black? So yesterday, dahling!). As for that smudgy eyeliner – it’s not a good look on a guy your age. Get thee behind me, Satan! … at least until you’ve reclaimed your copyright and learnt how to dress properly. This season, your followers have been reduced to shopping at Primark.